Woman, 47, Gets Year for Attack on Mother, 84

A North Hollywood woman was sentenced to a year in jail Monday after she pleaded no contest to assaulting her 84-year-old mother with a butcher knife when the mother refused to give her money to buy heroin.

Floretta Lee Griffith, 47, who prosecutors say has a long criminal record, including a conviction for assaulting her father with a knife in 1987, was sentenced in Van Nuys Municipal Court by Judge Gregg Marcus after pleading no contest July 2 to a charge of assault with a deadly weapon.

Griffith was also placed on probation for three years and “forbidden to annoy, harass or molest her parents,” said Deputy City Atty. Laura Van Eyk, who prosecuted the case.

Griffith was arrested May 23 at her parents’ North Hollywood home after attacking her mother, a semi-invalid, for refusing to give her money to buy heroin, Van Eyk said. Griffith held a butcher knife to her mother’s throat and threatened her until her 82-year-old father grabbed the knife and pulled Griffith off, Van Eyk said.

Griffith was arrested the morning after the assault when neighbors heard her screaming in the back yard and telephoned police.

In addition to the 1987 assault on her father, Griffith was convicted of misusing a hypodermic needle in 1988, petty theft in 1981, 1984 and 1988 and three separate prostitution charges in 1986, according to prosecutors. She was also convicted of felony burglary in 1983 in Van Nuys, they said, and was most recently convicted of petty theft last year in Burbank Municipal Court.